


Stories

by TheSigyn



Category: Moonlighting (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2002-05-20
Updated: 2002-05-20
Packaged: 2018-03-31 10:39:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,773
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3975025
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSigyn/pseuds/TheSigyn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Rather than admit that I was working in a pointless, superficial position, as a nameless drone, so that I could get enough food so that I could continue my empty, barren existence, getting pointless, superficial positions doing useless paperwork for people I didn't know who didn't know me, in this useless, endless cycle, again and again and again-" Herbert realized he was getting lost and took a deep breath to calm himself. He stared at the table top. "I worked very hard at forgetting who I really was. What I really was."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stories

**Author's Note:**

> Some of my earliest fanfictions, never before published, because frankly, my Herbert ones are silly. Written 2002
> 
> All the stories written 2002 are posted solely so that I can point at them when someone claims they'll never be as good a writer as me. Yes you will. Look where I started.

  
    It had been weeks. Well, a week, but it felt like weeks. Something was very, very wrong, and Agnes couldn't figure out what it was.  
    Herbert wasn't talking to her. This was extremely odd, if there was one thing you could always count on Herbert to do it was talk. At length. About anything at hand. Oh, he wasn't giving her the silent treatment, they exchanged pleasantries, he asked her to pass the sugar, or reminded her to pick up items when she went shopping. But the long, drawn out, loquacious discussions about astronomy and ancient history and detailed psychological analysis of his current favorite fictional character were gone!  
    Admittedly, she had been rather cool with him for a while. Ever since she had caught him flirting with Ms. Hayes. She hadn't been able to believe it. Herbert? And Ms. Hayes? And why not, a part of her thought. I love him, I can't see why anyone else wouldn't. And Ms. Hayes was beautiful, there was no denying that. Heart-stoppingly, head-turningly, sweat-inducingly beautiful at times. Of course Herbert would notice her, even Agnes found herself noticing Ms. Hayes on occasion. But there was no way she could picture Ms. Hayes with anyone but Mr. Addison, and the idea of picturing her with Herbert was just heartrending. On both accounts. Couldn't he see that? Didn't he love her?  
    But Agnes had gotten over that. She had. She kept telling herself she had. Herbert had hardly looked at Ms. Hayes since. But then, he'd hardly looked at Agnes either.  
    Their sex life was fine. Almost better than fine. At night, Bert would hold her like he'd never let her go, and he'd kiss her as if they had been separated for a month. Or as if they were about to say goodbye...  
    But he wouldn't really look at her. And he didn't really talk to her.  
    Agnes found it wearing on her, and she had again become cool in return. Just that morning she had leaped all over him just for answering the phone. Why had she done that? Admittedly, she did consider the phone her territory, but it hadn't required that. And she had been gone, she knew she had, even as she was telling him off, she knew she'd have lost the call anyway.  
    She'd just had a conversation with Ms. Hayes, however, which had brought this all into perspective. She'd told Ms. Hayes about her college years, and the varsity football team which she had shuffled around like cards. Thinking about all of those guys had brought home all those things they had all lacked, which Herbert had in abundance. She could swim in his earnest enthusiasm, his obsessive information, his words, his wit. Most of her football boytoys had spoken in one word sentences. "Bed." "Pizza?" "Later." Herbert buried them.  
    She missed him, that was all. While he was right there, she missed him. She missed all the things which made him Herbert.  
    She made up her mind to do something about it.  
    Herbert was ironing his shirts in the livingroom when she came in that evening. A strange, touchingly domestic scene to come home to. But someone had to iron them, and Bert had been a bachelor most of his life. He knew how to cook too, some dishes better than Agnes could. His idea of home decorating was brown and sparse, but since they had moved in together, Herbert was perfectly pleased to give her almost free reign with the decorating. Lilac wallpaper he considered a bit much, but other than that he wasn't very picky.  
    "Hi, Bert," she said.  
    Herbert glanced up and nodded at her. "Evening," he said.  
    She took off her hat, hung up her bag and curled up in the chair near where Hebert was ironing. "Shall I make dinner, or do you have something planned?" she asked.  
    "You know, Agnes, I'm not real hungry. Why don't you just scrounge something."  
    She wasn't hungry either, so she didn't say anything. She sat and watched him iron for a while. He seemed distracted. "What's the matter, love?" she finally asked.  
    "What makes you think something's the matter?" he asked.  
    "You won't talk to me."  
    "I talk to you. I'm talking to you now, aren't I?"  
    "You aren't acting like yourself, is all," she said.  
    Herbert shrugged. "I don't see how I can not act like me."  
    He wasn't helping. He was sidestepping. Agnes lost her temper. "Look, what is your problem? You've been mooning about for weeks, and you're carefully not saying anything rude to me at all, but you're angry. And you're making me angry. What's the matter?"  
    "Nothing, all right?"  
    "No. It's not nothing. It's not nothing, or you wouldn't be getting so angry at me for trying to find out what nothing it is!"  
    "You're the one who's angry."  
    "No, if you weren't angry, you'd still be you, and you wouldn't be telling me it's nothing!"  
    "Agnes, if I say nothing, I probably mean it."  
    "No, you don't. Nothing is something, and I want to know what the something is. So tell me."  
    He shook his head no.  
    "Tell me," she said again.  
    He closed his eyes at the shirt on the ironing pad.  
    "Will you just tell me already?" she snapped.  
    Finally turned on her. "I didn't nearly bury the business," he shot at her.  
    "What?" she asked, utterly confused.  
    Bert glared at her. "When Blue Moon nearly went under. It wasn't my fault. We might have even kept the employees, if it wasn't for MacGillicuddy, the ingrate. I may not have run it well, but the account wasn't my fault."  
    Agnes stared at him for a moment in total bewilderment. She had mentioned something... right after she'd caught him with Ms. Hayes...  "Oh! Are you still upset about that?"  
    "No. Yes. That's one thing," Bert said, getting back to his ironing.  
    Agnes shook her head, relived. "No, it wasn't your fault, Bert," Agnes said, "and I shouldn't have said it. I should have realized you'd dwell on it like this. I was just angry and frightened and I didn't want Mr. Addison going away."  
    Bert nodded quietly at the ironing board. "Well, you're happy now. He didn't go."  
    Agnes watched him iron. "No, he didn't. And I'm glad he didn't. But I'm not happy, because something is very wrong here."  
    Bert turned his shirt so that he could iron another spot. He didn't want Agnes to see that he was shaking. He kept ironing.  
    "Bert, you've completely ironed that shirt three times since I've come in here."  
    Bert stared down at the shirt. Indeed, he had. He hadn't noticed. With a sense of finality, he folded the shirt and reached into the basket for another one.  
    "Herbert, there is something wrong. You are never this quiet."  
    Bert shrugged.  
    "Sheesh, Bert, talk to me!"  
    "You don't need me to talk to you."  
    "I don't need you? Bert, I'm living with you. People living with each other need to communicate, or they won't be living together very long."  
    A cold shot of frizzon went from Bert's jaw down his back. Don't say that, don't say that, don't say that he thought. He closed his eyes.  
    "What is bugging you?"  
    Nothing, Bert meant to say. He intended to say nothing.  
    "MacGillicuddy."  
    As Bert had anticipated, Agnes puffed up in irritation. "I just don't get it. What is with you and him!"  
    "What is with you and him is the question!" Bert lashed out.  
    "What on earth are you talking about?" Agnes asked.  
    Bert glared at her. His eye twitched. "You kissed him," Bert blurted out.  
    Agnes looked taken aback. "When?"  
    Herbert stared at her in amazement. How could she not even remember? "Last week!" Bert snapped.  
    "I did?" Agnes thought a bit. "I did," she remembered. "How did you know?"  
    "I saw you."  
    Agnes was confused. "You weren't in the room."  
    Bert scoffed. "Honestly, Agnes, I may not be Mr. Addison, but I am a detective! I saw you through the window."  
    Agnes thought back. She hadn't yet opened the venetian blinds that morning when she and MacGillicuddy were discussing their triumph over Operation Elevator. That meant Bert had to have been peering though the blinds at them. "You were spying on me?" Agnes asked.  
    Bert did not look the least bit abashed. "I had my reasons. You went off with him the night before, and you didn't get home for hours. Besides, you could hear the two of you squealing halfway down the hall."  
    "Yes. You could hear us. Which meant we weren't doing anything wrong!"  
    "Yeah, talking about romance and getting all touchy feely isn't doing anything wrong."  
    "No, it's not! Listen, MacGillicuddy is my friend, whether you like it or not, Herbert Quentin Viola."  
    "No, I don't like it," Bert told her. But he didn't seem to press the issue. He went back to pressing his shirt instead.  
    Agnes stood fuming for a moment before a thought struck her. "Well, why didn't you march in and accuse us at the time?" she asked.  
    Bert shrugged. "I hadn't planned on mentioning anything now," he said to the ironing board. "You just kept on at what was wrong."  
    "You've never had any problems attacking MacGillicuddy before," Agnes told him.  
    Bert shrugged again.  
    "What prompted your sudden silence that morning?" she pressed him.  
    "Look, I remembered what started our feud, and the problem hasn't gone away yet, okay?"  
    "No, it's not okay! You're acting like you've been given a lump of coal for Christmas. So what started it?"  
    Bert stared at her. His face was hurt and desperate. "You," he snapped.  
    Agnes gazed at him for a moment. She searched her mind. "Me?" she asked. "What did I do?"  
    "Oh, Agnes, you did nothing," said Bert, turning the shirt to iron the sleeves. He wouldn't look at her.  
    "No, what about me?" Agnes demanded. "I honestly can't remember."  
    Bert was embarrassed.  He didn't want to admit what had happened from his point of view, how he had watched MacGillicuddy move in on his mate, when he was too insecure to even bear seeing her near anyone else. In order not to have to he grabbed issues around the incident, to remind her without bringing it up himself. "Not surprising," he muttered. "The issue kind of got buried in Ms. Hayes pregnancy and Mr. Addison's disappearance."  
    Agnes blinked. She cocked her head a moment. "Ohhhh," she said. "So why did that keep you from accusing him?" she asked.  
    Herbert was silent, but the answer was in the way he looked down at the shirt. In the way he avoided looking into her eyes. He was afraid that she really wanted MacGillicuddy. And if what she really wanted was MacGillicuddy, Bert didn't want to know about it. Because he loved her so much, he was willing, or at least willing to try, to let her go if she really wanted to be with someone else. So he wasn't going to confront them. She took Bert's hand off the iron, turned it off and set it on its base then pulled him over to the couch, where she sat him down. He let her lead him, his eyes dark with sorrow. "Do you really think I'd need anyone but you?" she asked him.  
    Bert looked at her and said two words. "Football team."  
    Agnes got angry again. "How dare you hold that against me!?"  
    "Who said I was holding it against you?"  
    "You were the one who brought it up!"  
    "All I did was mention it, as proof that you haven't always been known to be very discriminating."  
    "Clearly, since I'm shacking up with you!" She shouldn't have said that. She knew she shouldn't have said that the moment she said it.  
    Bert surged up from the couch with a snarl. "Oh, fine. Fine. Fine. I'll move out then." He looked panicked, and his hands shook, but his voice was strong and furious.  
    "I didn't mean that," Agnes began.  
    "I don't need you," Bert shot at her with a growl, pacing back and forth like a trapped tiger. "I don't. I don't." Agnes was most sure he was more trying to convince himself than her. She was hurt just the same. "Madeline just gave me a raise, I'll be fine without you."  
    "Madeline?" Agnes couldn't stand it. "Madeline? I've been meaning to ask you this, since when was Ms. Hayes "Madeline"?."  
    "Since she realized my potential. Clearly you don't understand how important I am to this business. Without me, Madeline would have to resort to a far smaller case load. Why just yesterday she told me I was virtually indispensable."  
    "Oh, stop lying," Agnes snapped. "It's the most irritating thing you do, every time you do it, I want to slap you!"  
    "What do you mean, every time?"  
    "I mean you lie all the time!"  
    "I do not."  
    "Yes you do."  
    "Not."  
    "Do."  
    "Not!"  
    "Do!"  
    Bert growled at the ceiling. "What is this? I feel like stalking out of the room and slamming the door! Is their relationship rubbing off on us? I can't take this!"  
    "I can't take that either!" Agnes snapped. The she realized she wasn't helping. Neither of them were helping. "Let's calm down," she added, taking both his hands in hers.  
    "I don't want to calm down," Bert said, trying to pull away.  
    "Another lie. Yes you do."  
    Bert let her take his hands. He was still breathing heavily. "They're not lies," he said defensively.  
    "Well then what are they?" she asked, but she kept her voice gentle. "They certainly aren't the truth."  
    Bert looked up into her eyes. Suddenly he was very, very still. So still he frightened her. "Truth," he said. She could hardly see his lips move. "You want truth?"  
    "That's all I've ever wanted, Bert," Agnes said.  
    Bert's face was serious. He took in a breath. "Very well then," he said. "You want truth, it's a long story. Sit down." He directed her to the table and they sat down opposite each other. He looked so very sad...  
    "Herbert," Agnes began.  
    "Just," Bert held up a hand. He was silent for a long time, looking at the table top. "Great. Now I'm trying to see how I can talk my way out of this without saying what I sat down to say, and I can't think of a way. Never have I admitted this to anyone. In fact, I very rarely admit this to myself. I only know about it because I started paying attention a few years ago, when I temped as a file clerk for a psychiatrist. All right." He grunted. "I'm dancing around this. Okay. I've never actually enjoyed this existence.”  
    He paused and looked at her. “Oh, God, Agnes, in order to explain this, you get a pocket life history, if you don't mind sitting through it." It wasn't really a question, but he paused anyway, as if expecting an answer.  
    "I don't mind," Agnes said softly.  
    "Well, it's not very exciting. Which is something of the issue. I.... okay. You can do this, Bert; I grew up with my father expecting me to work after him in the garlic business. Never to have any aspirations but that. And the whole time he, and everyone else, kept telling me I'd never do a good job at it. So I spent my childhood with some preset future, which I detested the idea of, with the ingrained knowledge that I'd never be good enough at even that. I don't know exactly what I did, or failed to do, which made them decide I was so useless. They couldn’t have known I would stay short when I grew up.”  
    Herbert never admitted he was short. Never. He buried it deep down and got angry when anyone insinuated the fact. That statement alone told Agnes exactly how bare he was making his soul for her. She was almost afraid again. The last time he had done this had been after he’d asked her to move in with him, after he had just messed up so royally he had clearly wanted to kill himself. It had taken him three days to get back his confidence, or what she had come to see as his facade of confidence, which enabled him to get up in the morning, to actually get anything accomplished, to not have nightmares every night. But she didn’t want to stop him. She couldn’t stop him. Herbert doing this was like letting her crawl inside him, an intimacy she had never imagined, even when her own dreams went soaring. It was the greatest gift he could ever give her, and that it was hard on him made it that much more.  
    “ I got almost all 'A's in school,” he went on. “I worked incredibly hard at it. But somehow it was never good enough for any of them.  
    “So I spent a miserable childhood. Until such time as everyone else started to hit their growth spurt, and I, to be frank, really never did. And getting onto sports teams, which I was never good at. And getting interested in girls, which, probably because of the last two issues, I was never particularly good at attracting. So I stayed home and I read a lot. I read a lot of books, Agnes, that's what I did, I read. So rather than think about these schools filled with literally hundreds of people who sort of... looked over my head for someone more interesting, I was always someone else. Someone in my books.”  
    He stared at the table top, his face white, drained. Agnes wanted to stop him, to stop him reliving all this horror which was making him so miserable, but in order to help him, she had to know what the problem was. She let him continue.  
    “So I had three years of ostracized hell in middle school. Then I had four years of high school during which time I was completely neglected by everyone. Even the teachers seemed unable to remember I was there. They'd grade my papers and walk on by, because clearly, I didn't need any help. Or something. Then I had four years of college with no real life. My best friend was the roommate I'd been assigned, and to be honest, he only barely put up with me. Most of the women I've been with have been mercy dates, to be brutally frank with myself. Or women too desperate or hungry or bored to care overly much. The few times I've allowed myself to fall in love... or, no, couldn't stop myself from falling in love with, have been women who hardly knew I existed.  
    “There was one who put up with me until she found someone better, and then walked out with a 'you had to know this was coming, Bert, I've never really liked you.'" He stayed silent for a moment, his face far away, and bitter. "But I-I had my books, and I had those relationships and those friendships and the real world didn't matter, so long as I had this dream life.  
    “I couldn't stand the garlic business. Bored me to tears. The pay didn’t exist, Dad expected me to live at home. I could do the work, Dad started me on it, and I dug through those books, and everyone ignored me or belittled me for being the boss's son. I realized I could be bored and ignored and broke somewhere where no one had any expectations of me, even low expectations, which for some reason, I could never even seem to live up to!"  His voice snarled on the last three words, and he glared at the table top. "I ran away," he said. "Well, no, I told them I was leaving, but Dad called missing persons on me. Like it mattered. I went as far away as I could without leaving the country. All I knew was I couldn't go back." His eyes went unfocused. "Hardest thing I ever did.  
    “So then for the last ten, grueling years I've eeked out a barren existence in temp jobs," he used the word "temp" with a scorn and disgust easily equal to the tone he used about MacGillicuddy. "Walking into offices with people who barely knew I existed, let alone my name, doing busy work which everyone else was too busy to do. If I had... payed attention to what was really going on, Agnes, I quite frankly would have killed myself. Why bother living? There was nothing where I was, but there was less than nothing back east.  
    “So I made up these... stories. Like I used to live in my books, I made up stories of my own. Stories about how important I really was, and how what I was doing was vital to the continuation of whatever business had just been thrust upon me. I'd do research, I really would look into what I was doing. I thought maybe if I was enthusiastic enough, one of these stories I made up would come true. This had a rather useful side effect, as it turned out; if I was arrogant enough, I wouldn't make any real friends I had to say goodbye to when I left. I hate saying goodbye. It hurts too much. I've had to do it too much.  
    “So I'd go and be a nondescript peon in some minuscule business which had less respect for me than they did for the sandwich delivery boys." Agnes squirmed. She'd dated one of those sandwich delivery boys. "They usually never used my name, because we both knew they'd get it wrong. So... rather than admit that I was working in a pointless, superficial position, as a nameless drone, so that I could get enough food so that I could continue my empty, barren existence, getting pointless, superficial positions doing useless paperwork for people I didn't know who didn't know me, in this useless, endless cycle, again and again and again-" He realized he was getting lost and took a deep breath to calm himself. He stared at the table top. "I worked very hard at forgetting who I really was. What I really was."  
    “And then... Blue Moon... A detective agency. You helped unpack my books, you've seen all the mysteries. That's what I read, that's what kept me sane, that's my dream. And the very first thing when I walked in that morning was you...” Agnes looked down. She was quite ashamed of her behavior that first week. Besides that, she didn’t like thinking about how long he had rejected her. It had taken months.  
    She had thought he was completely internalized at this point, but he must have been merely facade-less. Apparently without hiding behind some story, he could see more clearly than she ever imagined, because he noticed her discomfort in a second, and guessed its cause.  
    “It wasn’t that I found you unattractive, you know. You may have noticed I was flirting with you... before you jumped me.” She had noticed. She had never been flirted with like that before... It was why she had jumped him.  
    He smiled at her gently, not his lovely, wicked grin, but a sad fondness which pierced her to the heart. “I’d never been jumped like that before,” he said. “I’ve always had to do a lot of coaxing and persuading. Get a woman so excited she stopped noticing the... short, dumpy dreamer who cowered before her. I’m not at all used to a woman being the aggressor. That threw me for a loop, let me tell you. My dreams never became reality before, particularly not in a mere fifteen minutes, I didn't know how to handle it. You confused me no end.  
    “But," He seemed to get stuck for a moment. Then he continued in a rush. "The easiest way was always to make up a story as soon as I could, because it was so much harder once I had entrained in my mind what I really was. And here, two years with Ms. Hayes and we've hardly even spoken, really, let alone worked together. So now it's another new relationship, and I'm - making up stories again!" This had been a very hard speech for him. Those tears which were always too close for comfort rose again to his eyes. "I don't want to, it's just I can't... stop... doing what..." he stopped fighting the sob in his throat, "kept me alive for so long," he finished, his face buried in his arm.  
    For a moment he sat there, trying to compose himself alone. Then he felt a hand on his curls. Agnes ran her fingers through his hair. "Don't, I'll be at this for hours if you comfort me," Bert complained to the table top. It was what he was always afraid of, that he would just start sobbing uncontrollably for hours and hours and hours, until he cried himself sick, until was nothing but the tears and the misery and the internal anguish of his barren existence... This train of thought wasn’t helping. He sobbed harder. He fought it harder, choking himself in an attempt to staunch the flow of tears.  
    Agnes stood up and pulled her chair around the table, to sit beside him. She put her arm around his shaking shoulders and pulled him to her. He tried to pull away for a moment, but he hadn't the strength. He found himself sobbing into her shoulder. Some part of him was standing back, screaming at him to pull himself together, and stop admitting how painful his life had been. But it felt so good to admit it, to have this woman he loved hold him, press her lips to his temple, just accept his weakness, and love him in spite of it. Or because of it. Even crying felt good too. To let out thirty-four years of world-weary misery.  
    "You're so amazing, Agnes," he said into her ear, his sobs quieting now that he wasn’t fighting them so. "All your life, you'll be the first to admit you've been happy. And here I am, living this life of quiet desperation." Never had he heard of anyone who fit that description better.  
    Agnes pulled away a bit and held his face in her hands, brushing his tears away with her thumbs. "I'm sorry," Bert whispered. Agnes's own eyes shone with tears of sympathy. He felt so embarrassed. "I'm really not looking for pity, it's just..."  
    "I know," Agnes said. She kissed his cheek.  
    Bert shook his head, and took her hands. "I really am sorry I can't stop getting lost," he said. "I don't know how, I... This is the first time in my life anything has really been real. I'm not sure I know how to live in the real world." He brushed his lips against her fingers. "But since you're here, I'm desperate to try."  
    Agnes smiled at him. "Actually, you make a lot more sense. I always knew you got carried away."       
    Bert gazed at her. "You did?"  
    "Always," she smiled. "And I kinda like it," she added.  
    Bert blinked. "You do?"  
    She nodded. "It's fun to watch you soar," she told him. "Most of the time," she added. "I didn't realize why you did it though."  
    Bert shook his head a very little, in a tiny shrug. "Well, I spent two months studying to figure out what I did and why I did it," Bert said. He made a sound which was half laugh and half sob. "The really ironic thing was that I found out what I was doing in the middle of one of these stories." Tears started leaking out of his eyes again.  
    Agnes held him. "You got me now, Bert," she said. "You've really got me. And I don't care where your mind takes you. So long as it stays off Ms. Hayes," Agnes added.  
    "I'm sorry," Herbert whispered. "I'm so sorry. Hell, now that I'm out of it, I was making her uncomfortable too," he said. "And me," he added. “I’m so much at the mercy of these some times, I have no control...” He looked up at her. "I love you, Agnes," he said. "I love you so much it terrifies me. I've never had anything this real before. If it turns out it really was just some kind of dream..."  
    "It's not, Bert. I swear it's not. Even if the show ends, Agnes will always love Herbert." She touched his cheek. “Always.”  
    Bert smiled. "Thank you," he whispered. "I needed that."  
  



End file.
